Investigation of Learning Behaviors and Achievement of Vocational High School Students Using an Ubiquitous Physics Tablet PC App Siska Wati Dewi Purba 1 & Wu-Yuin Hwang 2 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 Abstract In this study, we designed and developed an app called Ubiquitous-Physics (U-Physics) for mobile devices like tablet PC or smart phones to help students learn the principles behind a simple pendulum in Physics. The unique character- istic of U-Physics is the use of sensors on mobile devices to collect acceleration and velocity data during pendulum swings. The data collected are transformed to facilitate stu- dents’ understanding of the pendulum time period. U- Physics helped students understand the effects of pendulum mass, length, and angle in relation to its time period. In addi- tion, U-Physics was equipped with an annotation function such as textual annotation to help students interpret and un- derstand the concepts and phenomena of the simple pendu- lum. U-Physics also generated graphs automatically to dem- onstrate the time period during which the pendulum was swinging. Results showed a significant positive correlation between interpreting graphs and applying formula. This find- ing indicated that the ability to interpret graphs has an impor- tant role in scientific learning. Therefore, we strongly recom- mend that physics teachers use graphs to enrich students’ in- formation content and understanding and negative correlation between pair coherence and interpreting graphs. It may be that most of the participants (vocational high school students) have limited skill or confidence in physics problem solving; so, they often seek help from teachers or their high-achieving peers. In addition, the findings also indicated that U-Physics can enhance students’ achievement during a 3-week time pe- riod. We hope that this app can be globally used to learn physics in the future. Keywords U-Physics . Pendulum learning . Interpreting graphs . Applying formula . Pair coherence Introduction Learners’ achievement can be improved by using mobile de- vices (Attewell 2005; Liu et al. 2003). Learning to use mobile devices can increase student participation in learning activities and interaction within real contexts (Chen et al. 2012) as well as specific domains (Kukulska-Hulme 2005). Learning through mobile devices has recently become popular across different fields of education. According to a Pearson survey, most students expect to use mobile devices in their classrooms (Lepp et al. 2014). Learning via mobile devices provides new affordances for learners, such as learning that is personalized, contextualized, and not hindered by temporal or environmen- tal constraints (Crompton 2013). Ally and Prieto-Blázquez (2014) showed that there was great interest in the research community to investigate mobile learning in education, and science is one subject area that has benefited from using mo- bile devices. In physics activities, students have to learn not only physics theory and calculations but also learn how to develop their reasoning and critical thinking abilities for problem solving. Some researchers have pointed out that students’ representa- tion skills are the key to arrive at a successful solution in critical thinking and problem solving (Gagne et al. 1993; Mayer 1992). Physics is more than just using a formula in a * Wu-Yuin Hwang wyhwang@cc.ncu.edu.tw Siska Wati Dewi Purba siskapurba20@gmail.com 1 Graduate Institute of Network Learning Technology, National Central University, Jhongli City, Taoyuan County, Taiwan 2 Graduate Institute of Network Learning Technology, National Central University, Jhongli City, Taoyuan County, Taiwan J Sci Educ Technol DOI 10.1007/s10956-016-9681-x